Make your website more accessible and more shoppable by using alt text

OK jewelers and metalsmiths – you’ve made a gorgeous body of work, photographed it, and built a website.

Now it’s time to make your website more accessible.

I love alt text so much. It is a powerful tool for website accessibility. While alt text is not the only tool at your disposal to make your site accessible, it is an important one.

It’s OK if you didn’t know about this important aspect of your website before now. Here is a guide to what it is, why you want it, and how to write it. 

(Author’s note – if you are already familiar with alt text, scroll down to the How to Write It and Where to Put It sections. And at the end of this post, I include a link to a tool that I use to scan for alt text.)

What is alt text?

Alt text is the small bit of text that you use to describe an image on your website. Sometimes it is also called an alt attribute, or alt tags. All major eCommerce platforms have a place for you to add alt text.

How does alt text work on a jewelry website?

Let’s say that someone with a visual impairment needs and wants to use your website. In order to do so, they use a screen reader that reads the page out loud. When it hits an image on the page, it doesn’t skip it, it reads whatever description you’ve given it.

This is what alt text is primarily for – to provide descriptions of your photos.

Other people who need alt text include folks with limited internet bandwidth – ever have super slow internet that won’t load images? Having alt text there helps you figure out if there is important information in those photos.

Oh! And alt text is super useful to anyone who uses image blockers in their email. If images aren’t loading, it is important to describe them.

Why you want alt text on your website

There are lots of reasons, but the most essential reason is that accessibility and inclusivity help everyone navigate the internet.

For us as small business owners, there are also practical reasons why we need alt text. And there are no downsides to adding it to your website. Using alt text on your website is one of your best practices.

Reason number one why you want to use alt text on your website

Having a website that is inaccessible means that you are potentially leaving money on the table. After all, if someone can’t use or navigate your website, then they also can’t buy from you.

Reason number two why you want to use alt text on your website

All of the text that’s on your website is searchable via search engines like Duck Duck Go, Mozilla, Google, etc. You give yourself your best advantage if you have good information on your site. And this means having searchable text on your images.

Reason number three why you want to use alt text on your website

This is a personal opinion, but one that is shared by disability rights advocates, professional web designers, and even the earliest inventors of the world wide web – accessibility is a basic aspect of running a website, and I strive to make mine as accessible as I know how to.

How to write alt text for jewelry

Alt text has one purpose, and multiple benefits and it’s core purpose is to be read by people, not bots.

So whenever you write alt text, think about what another person needs to know about the image.

Best Practices for writing alt text for jewelry

• Put yourself into the head of a customer searching for jewelry.

• Think about how they would describe it, and try to answer their questions.

• Is it the material? The shape? The stone? If it is shown on an ear?

• Use keywords sparingly, and make sure that they are relevant to the image.

• Be descriptive and don’t rely on an older internet practice of “keyword stuffing” *

• Keep your alt text under 150 characters or 12 words so that they are understandable and readable.

Examples of alt text for jewelry

Here is a photo of some earrings. The alt text reads “oxidized silver eye-shaped stud earrings on a steel slab”.

In this case, keywords might be “eye-shaped” “stud earrings” and “silver” but all are descriptive and informative, and therefore relevant to someone using my website.

All of them describe what exists in the image.

How to find out if your alt text is missing

I love this tool that scans pages on your website and will return which images have or don’t have alt text. It can help you see where perhaps you’ve left just the image filename in place (hello to all of us who have forgotten to name our images on occasion). It won’t tell you how to write it, but it can show you at a glance where it is not.

Where to put alt text on your images

It depends! Every website platform is different, and some even have different names for where you put the alt text.

List of eCommerce platforms and where to add alt text

I compiled a list of the most popular eCommerce platforms for small businesses and their alt text guidelines – Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress. One caveat is that these platforms may update their processes, and it is always worth double checking what the current processes are.

• Squarespace

  • Upload your image to your product listing

  • Hover over the image until three dots appear in upper right corner of the image

  • Select “Edit Metadata” (I told you some platforms like to call it by other names)

  • Enter your alt text into the field and save.

  • If you learn better with video, I made a screen recording showing you exactly where to put this in Squarespace

• Wix

  • Click the image in your Editor.

  • Click the Settings icon that looks like a gear.

  • Enter a description of the image under What’s in the image? Tell Google.

• Shopify

  • When editing your product listing go to the product details page and click the media item to see the “Preview media” page.

  • Click Add Alt text.

  • Enter your alt text, and then click Save Alt text.

  • Click the X to exit the preview page.

  • Some themes may change this information, be sure to check in on your theme for the specific placement.

• WordPress (caveat – some of this information might change depending on what plugins you have)

  • WordPress has both Image title and alt text

  • Both are good for people with poor vision or people who are using screen readers

  • If you need to prioritize in WordPress, prioritize alt text – this is better for both SEO and for accessibility

  • The Yoast plug in is pretty standard, and worth checking out.

  • WordPress also offers a beginners guide to alt text.

In an ideal world, these major companies would all use more clear calls to action, or design their sites so that you are prompted to add alt text each time you upload a product rather than having to hunt for its placement.

It would cut down on having to remember each and every time. But until then, I recommend adding it to your product upload checklist.

Common Questions about alt text

Here are some common questions that I’ve had about alt text:

If I have more poetic names for my jewelry (Andromeda necklace, Juliette earrings, etc.) should I include that name in the alt text?

Maybe not – keep in mind that this name will already be in your title and description, so it isn’t necessary to repeat it. Also, if it doesn’t offer anything descriptive, it won’t be useful enough to include.

Should I use humor or jokes in the alt text?

This subject has some divides, but generally, no. Keep your alt text to a simple description.

If you were my client, I might ask you to think about the customer’s experience. Do they simply need help making a purchase or are they on your site to be entertained?

Alt text is there to be informative and short. After all, it is very likely to be read out loud by a screen reader, and the extra text might be more of a hindrance than a help.

Should I use my brand name in the alt text?

It is tempting, and I have done it – especially when I want to make sure that my brand name follows my images. Imagine using a screen reader that repeats your brand name in multiple places – would this be helpful or not?

I would vote for not using your brand name in the alt text, but consider adding it to your filenames when you save your images on your computer.

Adding alt text to your products is a small extra task and one that adds so much!

I found that once I made it part of my routine checklist for uploading products to my site, it became much easier to make sure that it got done.

What questions do you have about alt text? Tell me in the comments!

*I made the keyword stuffing mistake early on and I had to go through my whole website to redo them. I still catch stray keyword stuffed images and update them when I catch them.

Keyword stuffing looks like:

“gold diamond earrings post studs real gold solid gold natural diamonds gold post earring studs”

Imagine for a moment that you are reading this out loud. How does that sound? To me it sounds nonsensical. This is a good/bad example of why you are better off using descriptive phrases.

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